Apes’ Cries Bring Jungle to Desert : House Painter Operates Gibbon Study Center in Santa Clarita Area

At sunrise each day, Alan Mootnick’s chorus greets the dawn with a yammering of wild hoots, filling the desert north of Santa Clarita with the exotic cacophony of an Asian jungle.

Mootnick runs the Gibbon and Gallinaceous Bird Center, home to up to two dozen gibbons, the small apes that claim--loudly--the title of noisiest land mammals on earth.

For 10 years Mootnick, a construction worker and house painter, has used his own money to run the center because he thinks gibbons are fascinating. It costs him about $30,000 a year, he said.

He is applying to California and federal tax authorities for recognition of the center as an educational institution. With tax-deductible status, he said, he hopes to attract grants that will allow him to give up construction work, concentrate on writing research papers, and perhaps move his gibbons to a new home somewhere with a milder climate, like Ventura.

Scholars from American and foreign universities visit the center to observe the gibbons. Mootnick has published 10 research papers in scholarly journals such as the American Journal of Primatology, Cell Genetics and Cytogenetics and works of the American Assn. of Zoological Parks and Aquariums.

His own formal education, however, consists of a diploma from Birmingham High School and a two-year dental technician course at Los Angeles City College. He never worked as a dental technician, he said, because “I hated the idea of being cooped up in a little office.” He found painting and remodeling houses more satisfying and runs his own business.

Mootnick shrugs off the observation that few people with his academic training could write papers acceptable to scientific journals.

“If you get good facts and can prove they’re right, background isn’t such a problem,” he said.

The academic community is impressed, however.

“Mootnick has worked very hard to establish credibility with the scientific community against what I think were overwhelming odds. It’s quite difficult for someone who hasn’t gone through formal training to be able to write a paper . . . and get it published in a journal that is referred (to) by experts in the field,” said Joe Erwin, a biology professor at American University in Washington.

Richard Tenaza, a biology professor at the University of the Pacific in Stockton who is usually named by primate researchers as one of the handful of gibbon experts in the country, said he was surprised to learn that Mootnick had no formal education in the field. “He’s very impressive on gibbon taxonomy--better at it than I am,” Tenaza said.

‘Dedication . . . Determination’

Taxonomy includes classifying individual animals as members of one of the nine species of gibbons, and many subspecies, which often look alike, a problem that is compounded by interbreeding of species in zoos. When other biologists and zoo administrators are stumped in classifying a gibbon, Tenaza said, they send for Mootnick to render judgment.

“Alan is the epitome of the kind of person who teaches himself through dedication and determination,” said Rick Barongi, curator of mammals at the San Diego Zoo.

“I can call Alan on the phone and play a recording of a gibbon’s vocalization, and he can tell me right off what species and subspecies it belongs to. Only one other researcher in the country can do that. And he has a Ph.D. and works at the Smithsonian,” Barongi said.

Although they are cute and their ability as natural acrobats makes them a delight to watch, life as a pet is psychologically harmful to gibbons, he said. They identify too closely with humans, lose their identity as gibbons and become confused.

Mootnick lives in a former machine shop on 5 acres in a remote area north of the city. He keeps 14 gibbons in tall cages equipped with ropes, trapezes and perches to give them leaping points. The population has fluctuated from a low of seven to a high of 27.

Mootnick began collecting gibbons when he lived in North Hollywood in 1971. He founded the center in 1978, keeping the animals on 2 1/2 rented acres in Chatsworth until 1981, when he bought the Santa Clarita Valley site.

“Some people like elephants or tigers, and I just happen to like gibbons,” he said. “I’ve been fascinated by them since I heard them vocalize in the zoo when I was about 7 years old.”

The piercing howl of a gibbon is music to his ears, said Mootnick, calling them “the songbirds of the primate family.”

The cry, which Mootnick said can be heard for 2 to 3 miles, is primarily a gibbon’s way of declaring to other gibbons that he has staked out a foraging territory and does not welcome competitors.

There have been no complaints from the neighbors in the sparsely inhabited area, Mootnick said. “On the contrary, some of them have told me they have friends over to hear the gibbons, that it gives the neighborhood something special,” he said.

An informal survey of neighbors backed him up. “We like them,” said Sue Smith, who lives about a mile away. “We hear them every morning and sometimes at night. They’re like the coyotes, a kind of a nice noise.”